Steampunk
Steampunk is a Retrofuturism subset of sci-fi that incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. For GURPS this is the 1815-1914 period though the genre itself focuses on the Victorian Age. In terms of technology it covers TL5 to early TL6. Its successor is Dieselpunk and predecessor Clockpunk. Historical Timeline 1815-1820 * 1817: Construction of the Erie Canal begins Simón Bolívar liberates Venezuela and sets off revolutions in South America.Simón Bolívar -Reverberations, Francisco de Miranda, Leavings and Returns, Defeat is Not Surrender, Heavy is the Head, and All Good Things * 1818: Frankenstein published * 1819: The sailing ship/sidewheel steamer SS Savannah crosses the Atlantic. Singapore is founded as a trading post of the British East India Company. 1820s * 1820: George IV becomes king of the United Kingdom. Missouri Compromise signed. * 1821: Catholic Church's ban on teaching Copernicus is lifted. Greece declares independence from the Ottoman Empire finally achieving it in 1832. First Mechanics' Institute established. * 1822: Rosetta Stone is translated by Jean-François Champollion Charles Babbage's Difference Engine 0 is built. * 1823: Royal Asiatic Society established. Monroe Doctrine is declared. Samuel Brown patents the first internal combustion engine. * 1824: Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals founded Panoramagram invented. * 1825: Stockton and Darlington Railway offers first passenger service. Menai Suspension Bridge completed. * 1826: University of London founded. American Temperance Society founded * 1827: Church of Latter Day Saints founded. Josef Ressel invents the screw propeller * 1828: Britain allows Dissenters and Catholics to hold office Ányos Jedlik starts work on electromagnetic self-rotors (proto dynamos) Friedrich Wöhler shows organic chemicals can be made in the lab. * 1829: Metropolitan Police Service founded James Smithson dies, his will with provision that if his nephew Henry James Hungerford died childess his fortune would go to the United States "to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men" which comes to pass in 1835. Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind by James Mill is published. 1830s * 1830: George IV is succeeded by William IV * 1831: Charles Darwin leaves on the HMS Beagle. Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction. * 1832: On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures published. Hippolyte Pixii builds an alternating current electrical generator. * 1833: Slavery abolished in the British Empire; the word "scientist" coined by William Whewell Analytical Engine planned. * 1834: Spanish Inquisition disbanded. * 1835: Samuel Colt patents the first revolver * 1836: The Great Trek of Dutch-speaking colonists up into the interior of southern Africa begins * 1837: Victoria succeeds William IV * 1838: First reference to fuel cells appears. Trail of Tears happens. * 1839: First Opium War beginsFirst Opium War - Trade Deficits and the Macartney Embassy, The Righteous Minister, Gunboat Diplomacy, and Conflagration and Surrender First Anglo-Afghan War begins. 1840s * 1840: Wellington, New Zealand founded. Johnny Appleseed meets Abraham Lincoln meet in New York City where they plant apple trees David Livingstone goes to Africa * 1841: New Zealand becomes a British colony * 1842: Crawford Long uses the first anesthesia * 1844: Samuel Morse demonstrates a telegraph line between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. * 1845: Texas joins the United States * 1846: Neptune discovered; Mexican-American War begins William Thompson appointed to the chair of natural philosophy in the University of Glasgow. Elise Howe patents the sewing machine. * 1847: Cyrus McCormick is created with invention of the mechanical reaper. * 1848: French Second Republic established The Communist Manifesto written. First cast iron framed building constructed. Mexican-American_War ends * 1849: American Gold Rush begins. 1850s * 1850: Taiping Rebellion begins; the name Georgium Sidus is abandoned by the last holdout in favor of Uranus * 1851: The Great Exhibition is held * 1852: Second French Empire established Henri Giffard invents the steam injector and the powered Giffard dirigible airship. Elisha Otis invents the safety elevator. * 1853: Crimean War begins Samuel Colt starts manufacturing revolvers Alexander Wood invents the hypodermic syringe Chloroform becomes accepted * 1854: Matthew Perry opens Japan to the world Wireless telegraphy demonstrated * 1856: Neanderthal man discovered William Henry Perkin discovers artificial dye in his search for synthetic quinine Henry Bessemer steel-making process makes large scale production possible Big Ben is cast. * 1857: The Indian Mutiny begins The Panic of 1857 occurs * 1858: On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection is read at London's Linnean Society. * 1859: Suez Canal construction begun Gaston Planté invents the lead-acid battery Solar storm of 1859 occurs. * 1860s * 1860: Edmond Modeste Lescarbault announces announced the discovery of planet between Mercury and the Sun to a meeting of the Académie des Sciences in Paris naming it Vulcan * 1861: American Civil War begins Victor Emmanuel II becomes king of a united Italy * 1862: The first Pacific Railroad Act is signed setting the stage for the First Transcontinental Railroad Otto von Bismarck becomes Prime Minister of Prussia The gatling gun patented First battle of Ironclads (Battle of Hampton Roads) occurs * 1864: William Thompson estimates Earth is between 20 to 400 million years old. International Workingmen's Association founded First Geneva Conventions establishes neutrality of medical facilities in war * 1865: American Civil War ends with the defeat of the South Laying of first transatlantic cable succeeds James Clerk Maxwell publishes his mathematic equations. Joseph Lister develops antiseptic surgery * 1866: Austro-Prussian War occurs; Alfred Nobel invents dynamite. * 1867: Canada is organized as a Dominion; The Alaska Purchase is made Diamonds are discovered in South Africa * 1868: Meiji Restoration begins * 1869: Thomas Edison patents the electric vote recorder Dmitri Mendeleev publishes the first modern periodic table Francis Galton publishes Hereditary Genius 1870s * 1870: Brooklyn Bridge construction begins 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution passed. U.S. Army Weather Bureau created. * 1871: Heinrich Schliemann begins excavation of Troy destroying much of the site in the process * 1873: Long Depression begins * 1874: First commercially successful typewriter manufactured by E. Remington & Sons Ferdinand von Zeppelin comes up with the idea of giant airships * 1876: Alexander Bell invents the telephone. Years later it would be said that Elisha Gray also invented the telephone.Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy * 1877: Giovanni Schiaparelli's notes of canali (channels in Italian) on Mars are quickly mistranslated as canals in English Years later is claimed that Louis Pasteur discovered Penicillium notatum in his samples of anthraxThis may be a misunderstanding of contamination by other bacteria rather than by mold per [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_de_Kruif#Microbe_Hunters Paul de Kruif's 1926 Microbe Hunters] * 1879: Zulu War occurs. Edison invents the first practical incandescent light bulb 1880s * 1880: Thomas Edison's finances the publishing of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_(journal) Science journal] Wabash, Indiana becomes the first city in the world to be powered by electricity. First Boer War begins. * 1881: Pasteur demonstrates his anthrax vaccine; Vatican archives are opened to the public * 1883: The Orient Express begins operation * 1884: The Maxim gun is invented Greenwich Mean Time is established * 1886: Henry Faulds offers his concept of fingerprinting to the Metropolitan Police but is ignored. The concept will be refined by Francis Galton * 1887: Michelson–Morley experiment fails to detect the Luminiferous aether used to explain how light travels through space. * 1888: Heinrich Hertz publishes papers on transverse free space electromagnetic waves Jack the Ripper starts murdering prostitutes. 1890s * 1889: Construction on Eiffel Tower finished * 1891: Work on the Trans-Siberian Railway begins * 1893: The Kinetophone sound-film method is said to have been demonstrated at the Chicago World's Fair * 1895: X-rays discovered * 1896: Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity though Marie Curie coins the term * 1897: Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee Turbinia demonstrated for Spithead Navy Review * 1898: Spanish-American War, Radium discovered * 1899: Second Boer War begins 1900s * 1900: Boxer Rebellion The Kinetophone short Le Duel d'Hamlet starring Sarah Bernhardt is shown at the Paris Exposition in 1900.The cylinder recording was lost but other examples from 1900 are Little Titch y sus Big Boots (1900) and Cyrano de Bergerac (1900 film) * 1901: Karl Landsteiner identifies A, B, and O blood types * 1902: Wilhelm Kress's attempt to get a seaplane to fly fails * 1903: First powered flight by Wright brothers * 1904: United States takes over the construction of the Panama Canal John Ambrose Fleming invents the two-electrode vacuum tube diode (the basis of the vacuum tube) Russo-Japanese War begins * 1905: Einstein publishes the Special Theory of Relativity providing a better solution then Luminiferous aether regarding light, magnetism, and gravity * 1906: San Fransisco earthquake HMS Dreadnought launched * 1907: Salvarsan synthesized * 1908: Robert H. Goddard starts work on rockets Model T manufactured * 1909: Robert Peary reaches North Pole 1910s * 1910: Earth passes through the tail of Halley's Comet. * 1911: Amundsen's South Pole expedition and death of Scott of the Antarctic Sun Yat-sun becomes first president of the Republic of China * 1912: Titanic sinksSee Titanic: Adventure Out of Time for alternative timelines Piltdown man hoax staged * 1913: Henry Ford invents the modern assembly line * 1914: Written in 1913, H.G. Wells' The World Set Free outlining the future history of atomic power and bombs is published. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is assassinated setting off a series of events that result in the Great War and ending the era.World War I: The Seminal Tragedy - The Concert of Europe, One Fateful Day in June, The July Crisis, The Final Act and Lies Related Material and References * The Sanitary Movement * The Supersizers Go... Victorian: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 * GURPS Horror * GURPS Old West * GURPS Steampunk * GURPS Steamtech * GURPS Steampunk 1: Settings and Style * GURPS Steampunk 2: Steam and Shellfire * GURPS Steampunk 3: Soldiers and Scientists Category:Punk reality Category:Timelines Category:Historical Period